Natura 2000 – the Opportunities and Dilemmas of the Rural Development within European Ecological Network

Protected areas are usually situated in the regions with large forests, small number of inhabitants (depopulation trends), poor soils, an insufficiently developed transport infrastructure and few enterprises. In such regions conflicts concerning the management of natural resources are frequent and funds for development are scarce. The aim of this paper is to increase the knowledge of socio-economic processes that occur in rural communes covered by the Natura 2000 network and of actions that ought to be taken to prevent self-governments from treating this form of protection as yet another fairly troublesome duty and costly task. It has been accepted that in order to prevent Natura 2000 from being perceived as nothing more than a system of injunctions and interdictions it is necessary to seek compromise solutions that are taking into account the arguments of both local communities and defenders of nature. An effective protection process cannot be ensured by the introduction of restrictions and interdictions alone. Problems connected with the protection of the treasures of Europe’s natural environment ought to be solved in a systemic and comprehensive way which would permit to simultaneously plan the creation of a protected area and the allocation of real funds needed for implementation of the strategy for its protection. The results presented in this paper should be seen as the first step – describing the starting point, which will be necessary to track the changes and analyze the influence of the Natura 2000 network on socio-economic development of rural areas in the future.